[Illustrations]
"'Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?'"—Page 204"'Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?'"—Page 204
"'Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?'"—Page 204"'Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?'"—Page 204
"Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?"
"From France."
"What is it doing here?"
"Bringing soldiers and supplies to a fort of the King of France in this country—where he soon will have many more," flung back the Breton captain defiantly.
"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"
This time a score of clear voices reinforced the Captain's—"Lutherans—Huguenots—the Reformed Faith—The Religion!" And the Captain added, "Who are you yourself?"
"I am Pedro Menendez de Avila, General of the fleet of the King of Spain, Don Felipe the Second, who come hither to hang and behead all Lutherans whom I find by land or sea, according to instructions from his Majesty, which leave me no discretion. These commands I shall obey, as you will presently see. At daybreak I shall board your ships. If I find there any Catholic he shall be well treated. But every heretic shall die."
The reply to the rolling sonorous ultimatum was a shout of derision.
"Ah, if you are a brave man, don't put it off till daylight! Come on now and see what you will get!"
Menendez in black fury snapped out a command. Cables were slipped, and the towering black hulk of theSan Pelayobore down toward theTrinity. But the Breton captain was already leading the little fleet out of danger, and with all sail set, went out to sea, answering the Spanish fire with tart promptness. In the morning Menendez gave up the chase and cameback to find armed men drawn up on the beach, and all the guns of the ships inside the bar pointed in his direction. He steered southward and found three ships already unloading in a harbor which he named San Augustin and proceeded to fortify.
In Fort Caroline, Pierre Debré, awakened by the sound of firing, ran down to the beach, where a crowd was gathering. No one could see anything but the flashes of the guns; who or what was attacking the ships there was no way of knowing. The first light of dawn showed the two fleets far out at sea, and Ribault at once ordered the drums to beat "To arms!" They saw the great galleon approach, hover about awhile, and bear away south. When the French fleet came back later, one of the captains, Cosette, reported that trusting in the speed of his ship he had followed the Spaniards to the harbor where they were now landing and entrenching themselves.
The terror which haunted the future of every Huguenot in France now menaced the New World.
Ribault gave his counsel for an immediate attack by sea, before Menendez completed his defense or received reinforcements. Laudonnière was ill in bed. The fleet sailed as soon as it could be made ready, and with it nearly every able fighting man in the settlement. Pierre, nearly crying with wrath and disappointment, was left among the non-combatants at the fort. In vain did old Challeux the carpenter try to console him. It might be, as Challeux said, that there would be plenty of chances to fight after his beard was grown, but now he was missing everything.
That night a terrible storm arose and continued for days. The marshes became a boundless sea; the forests were whipped like weeds in the wind. Where hadthe fleet found refuge? or had it been hurled to destruction by the rage of wind and sea? Laudonnière, in the driving rain, came from his sick-bed to direct the work on the defenses, which were broken down in three or four places. Besides the four dog-boys, the cook, the brewer, an old cross-bow maker, and the old carpenter, there were two shoemakers, a musician, four valets, fourscore camp-followers who did not know the use of arms, and the crowd of women and children. The sole consolation that could be found in their plight was that in such a storm no enemy would be likely to attack them by sea or land. Nevertheless Laudonnière divided his force into two watches with an officer for each, gave them lanterns and an hour glass for going the rounds, and himself, weak with fever, spent each night in the guard-room.
On the night of the nineteenth the tempest became a deluge. The officer of the night took pity on the drenched and gasping sentries and dismissed them. But on that night five hundred Spaniards were coming from San Augustin through almost impassable swamps, their provisions spoiled and their powder soaked, under the leadership of the pitiless Menendez. The storm had caught Ribault's fleet just as it was about to attack on the eleventh, and Menendez had determined to take a force of Spaniards overland and attack the fort while its defenders were away. With twenty Vizcayan axemen to clear the way and two Indians and a renegade Frenchman, François Jean, for a guide, he had bullied, threatened and exhorted them through eight days of wading through mud waist-deep, creeping around quagmires and pushing by main force through palmetto jungles, until two hours before daylight the panting, shivering, sullen men stood cursingthe country and their commander, under their breath, in a pine wood less than a mile from Fort Caroline. It was all that Menendez could do to get them to go a rod further. All night, he said, he had prayed for help; their provisions and ammunition were gone; there was nothing to do but to go on and take the fort. They went on.
In the faint light of early morning a trumpeter saw them racing down the slope toward the fort and blew the alarm. "Santiago! Santiago!" sounded in the ears of the half-awakened French as the Spaniards came through the gaps in the defenses and over the ramparts. Fierce faces and stabbing pikes were everywhere. Laudonnière snatched sword and buckler, rallied his men to the point of greatest danger, fought desperately until there was no more hope, and with a single soldier of his guard escaped into the woods. Challeux, chisel in hand, on his way to his work, swung himself over the palisade and ran like a boy. In the edge of the forest he and a few other fugitives paused and looked down upon the enclosure of the fort. It was a butchery. Some of the Huguenots in the woods decided to return and surrender rather than risk the terrors of the wilderness. The Spaniards, they said, were at least men. Six of them did return, and were cut down as they came. Pierre Debré side by side with a few desperate men who had one of the two light cannon the fort possessed, was fighting like a tiger in defense of a corner where a group of women and children were crouching.
When Menendez could secure the attention of his maddened men he gave an order that women, children and boys under fifteen should be spared. This order and the instant's pause it gave came just as the last ofthe men in Pierre's corner went down before the halberds of the Spaniards. Pierre leaped the palisade and ran for the forest. Looking back, he saw the trembling women and children herded into shelter, but not killed. Fifteen of the captured Huguenots were presently hanged; a hundred and forty-two had been cut down and lay heaped together on the river bank. Pierre plunged into the forest and after days of wandering reached a friendly Indian village. The carpenter and the other fugitives who escaped were taken to France in the two small ships of Ribault's fleet which had not gone to attack the Spanish settlement. Menendez returned at leisure to San Augustin, where he knelt and thanked the Lord.
The fate of the men of Ribault's fleet became known through the letters which the Spaniards themselves wrote in course of time to their friends at home, but chiefly through Menendez's own report to the King. Dominic de Gourgues heard of it from Coligny, and his eyes burned with the still anger of a naturally impetuous man who has learned in stern schools how to keep his temper.
"As I understand it," he said grimly and quietly, "Menendez, in the disguise of a sailor, found Ribault and his men shipwrecked and starving, some in one place, some in another. He promised them food and safety on condition that they should surrender and give up their arms and armor. He separated them into lots of ten, each guarded by twenty Spaniards. When each lot had been led out of sight of the rest he explained that on account of their great numbers and the fewness of his own followers he should be compelled to tie their hands before taking them into camp,for fear they might capture the camp. At the end of the day, when all had reached a certain line which Menendez marked out with his cane in the sand, he gave the word to his murderers to butcher them."
Coligny bowed his noble gray head.
"And he offered them life if they would renounce their religion, whereupon Ribault repeating in French the psalm, 'Lord, remember thou me,' they died without other supplication to God or man. On this account did Menendez write above the heads of those whom he hanged, 'I do this not as to Frenchmen but as to Lutherans.' And no demand for redress has as yet been made?"
"One," said the Admiral coolly. "A demand was made by Philip of Spain. He has required his brother of France to punish one Gaspé Coligny, sometimes known as Admiral, for sending out a Huguenot colony to settle in Florida."
The Gascon sprang to his feet muttering something between his teeth. "I crave your pardon, my lord," he added with a courteous bow. "I am but a plain rough soldier unused to the ways of courts, but it seems to me that things being as they are, my duty is quite simple." He bowed himself out and left Coligny wondering.
During the following months it was noted that in choosing the men for his coming expedition Gourgues appeared to be unusually select. He sold his inheritance, borrowed some money of his brother, and fitted out three small ships carrying both sails and oars. He enlisted, one by one, about a hundred arquebusiers and eighty sailors who could fight either by land or sea if necessary. He secured a commission from the Kingto go slave-raiding in Benin, on the coast of Africa. On August 22, 1567, he set sail from the mouth of the Charente.
"I should like to know," said one of the trumpeters, Lucas Moreau, "whether we are really going slave-catching, or not."
"Why do you think we are not?" asked the pilot, to whom he spoke.
"Because I have seen nothing on board that looks like it. Moreover, he was very particular to ask me if I had been in the Spanish Indies, and when he heard that I had been in Florida he took me on at once. I was out there, you know, when you were, two years ago."
"And you would like to go back?" asked the other, gruffly.
"If there were a chance of killing Menendez, yes," answered Moreau with a fierce flash of white teeth.
The trumpeter's guess was a shrewd one. When the tiny fleet reached the West Indies, the commander took his men into his confidence and revealed the true object of his voyage—to avenge the massacre at Fort Caroline. The result proved that he had not misjudged them. Fired by his spirit they became so eager that they wanted to push on at once instead of waiting for moonlight to pass the dangerous Bahama Channel. They came through it without mishap, and at daybreak were anchored at the mouth of a river about fifteen leagues north of Fort Caroline. In the growing light an Indian army in war paint and feathers, bristling with weapons, could be seen waiting on the shore.
"They may think we are Spaniards," said Dominicde Gourgues. "Moreau, if you think they will understand you, it might be well for you to speak to them."
No sooner had the trumpeter come near enough in a small boat for the Indians to recognize him, than yells of joy were heard, for the war party was headed by Satouriona himself, who well remembered him. When Moreau explained that the French had returned with presents for their good friends there was great rejoicing. A council was appointed for the next day.
In the morning Satouriona's runners had scoured the country, and the woods were full of Indians. The white men landed in military order, and in token of friendliness laid aside their arquebuses, and the Indians came in without their bows and arrows. Satouriona met Gourgues with every sign of friendliness, and seated him at his side upon a wooden stool covered with the gray "Spanish moss" that curtained all the trees. In the clearing the chiefs and warriors stood or sat around them, ring within ring of plumed crests fierce faces and watchful eyes. Satouriona described the cruelty of the Spaniards, their abuse of the Indians and the miseries of their rule, saying finally,
"A French boy fled to us after the fort was taken, and we adopted him. The Spaniards wished to get him to kill him, but we would not give him up, for we love the French." He waved his hand, and from the woods at one side came, in full Indian costume, bronzed and athletic, Pierre Debré.
Greatly as he was surprised and delighted, Gourgues dared not show it too plainly, and Pierre had grown almost as self-contained as a veteran of twice his years. When the French commander suggested fighting the Spaniards Satouriona leaped for joy. He and hiswarriors asked only to be allowed to join in that foray.
"How soon?" asked Gourgues. Satouriona could have his people ready in three days.
"Be secret," the Gascon cautioned, "for the enemy must not feel the wind of the blow." Satouriona assured him that there was no need of that warning, for the Indians hated the Spaniards worse than the French did.
"Pierre," said Gourgues, when he had the lad safe on board ship, "they said you were killed."
"I stayed alive to fight Spaniards," said the boy with a flash of the eye. "'Sieur Dominic, there are four hundred of them behind their walls, where they rebuilt our fort. I have hidden in the trees and counted. But you can trust Satouriona. The Spaniards have stolen women, enslaved and tortured men, and killed children, and the tribe is mad with hate."
Twenty sailors were left to guard the ships, Gourgues with a hundred and sixty Frenchmen took up their march along the seashore; their Indian allies slipped around through the forest. With the French went Olotoraca, the nephew of the chief, a young brave of distinguished reputation, a French pike in his hand. The French met their allies not far from the fort, and pounced upon the garrison just as it finished dinner, Olotoraca being the first man up the glacis and over the unfinished moat. The fort across the river began to cannonade the attacking party, who turned four captured guns upon them, and then crossed, the French in a large boat which had been brought up the river, the Indians swimming. Not one Spaniard escaped. Fifteen were kept alive, to be hanged on the very trees from which Menendez had hanged his French captives,and over them was set an inscription burned with a hot poker on a pine board:
"Not as to Spaniards, but as to Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers."
When not one stone was left upon another in either fort, Dominic de Gourgues bade farewell to his Indian allies, and taking with him the lad so strangely saved from death and exile, went back to France.
The full history of this dramatic episode is to be found in Parkman's "The Pioneers of France in the New World."
The full history of this dramatic episode is to be found in Parkman's "The Pioneers of France in the New World."
The full history of this dramatic episode is to be found in Parkman's "The Pioneers of France in the New World."
[Contents]
The moon herself doth sail the airAs we do sail the sea,Where by Saint Michael's Mount we fareFree as the winds are free.Our keels are bright with elfin goldThat mocks the tyrant's gaze,That slips from out his greedy holdAnd leaves him in amaze.White water creaming past her prowThe littleGolden HyndeBears westward with her treasure now—We'd ship and follow blind,But that he never did require—Our Captain hath us boundOnly by force of his desire—The quarry hunts the hound!The hunt is up, the hunt is upTo the gray Atlantic's bound,—The health of the Queen in a golden cup!—The quarry is hunting the hound!Like steel the stars gleam through the nightOn armored waves beneath,—As England's honor cold and brightWe bear her sword in sheath!When that great Empire dies awayAnd none recall her place,Men shall remember our work to-dayAnd tell of our Captain's grace,—How never a woman or child was the worseWherever our foe we found,Nor their own priests had cause to curseThe quarry that hunted the hound!
The moon herself doth sail the airAs we do sail the sea,Where by Saint Michael's Mount we fareFree as the winds are free.Our keels are bright with elfin goldThat mocks the tyrant's gaze,That slips from out his greedy holdAnd leaves him in amaze.
White water creaming past her prowThe littleGolden HyndeBears westward with her treasure now—We'd ship and follow blind,But that he never did require—Our Captain hath us boundOnly by force of his desire—The quarry hunts the hound!
The hunt is up, the hunt is upTo the gray Atlantic's bound,—The health of the Queen in a golden cup!—The quarry is hunting the hound!Like steel the stars gleam through the nightOn armored waves beneath,—As England's honor cold and brightWe bear her sword in sheath!
When that great Empire dies awayAnd none recall her place,Men shall remember our work to-dayAnd tell of our Captain's grace,—How never a woman or child was the worseWherever our foe we found,Nor their own priests had cause to curseThe quarry that hunted the hound!
[Contents]
White fog, the thick mist of windless marshes, masked the Kentish coast. The Medway at flood-tide from Sheerness to Gillingham Reach was one maze of creeks and bends and inlets and tiny bays. Nothing was visible an oar's length overside but shifting cloudy shapes that bulked obscurely in the fog. But although this was Francis Drake's first voyage as master of his own ship, he knew these waters as he knew the palm of his hand. His old captain, dying a bachelor, had left him the weather-beaten cargo-ship as reward for his "diligence and fidelity", and at sixteen he was captain where six years before he had been ship's-boy.
Scores of daring projects went Catherine-wheeling through his mind as he steered seaward through the white enchanted world. In 1561 Spain was the bogy of English seaports, most of whose folk were Protestants. There was no knowing how long the coast-wise trade would be allowed to go on.
Out of the white mist flashed a whiter face, etched with black brows and lashes and a pointed silky beard—the face of a man all in black, whose body rose and dipped with the waves among the marsh grass of an eyot. So lightly was it held that it might have slipped off in the wake of the boat had not Tom Moone the carpenter caught it with a boat-hook. But when they had the man on board they found that he was not dead.
Ten minutes before, the young captain would have said that every dead Spaniard was so much to the good, but he had the life-saving instinct of a Newfoundland dog. He set about reviving the rescued man without thinking twice on the subject.
"'T is unlucky," grumbled Will Harvest under his breath. "Take a drownded man from the sea and she get one of us—some time."
"Like enough," agreed his master blithely. "But this one's not drownded—knocked on the head and robbed, I guess. D'you think we might take him to Granny Toothacre's, Tom?"
"I reckon so," returned Tom with a wide grin, "seein' 't is you. If I was the one to ask her I'd as lief do it with a brass kittle on my head. She don't like furriners."
Drake laughed and brought his craft alongside an old wharf near which an ancient farm-house stood, half-hidden by a huge pollard willow. Here, when he had seen his guest bestowed in a chamber whose one window looked out over the marshes, he stayed to watch with him that night, sending the ship on to Chatham in charge of the mate.
"Now what's the lad up to?" queried Will as they caught the ebbing tide. "D'ye think he'll find out anything, tending that there Spanisher?"
"Not him. He don't worm secrets out o' nobody. But he's got his reasons, I make no doubt. You go teach a duck to swim—and leave Frankie alone," said Moone.
The youth did not analyze the impulse that kept him at the bedside of the injured man, but he felt that he desired to know more of him. The stranger was gaunt, gray and without jewel, gold chain or signetring to show who he was, but it was the same man who had spoken to him at Gravesend five years ago.
A barge-load of London folk had come down to see the launching of theSerchthrift, the new pinnace of the Muscovy Company, and among them was the venerable Sebastian Cabot. Alms were freely distributed that the spectators might pray for a fortunate voyage, but Frankie Drake was gazing with all his eyes at the veteran navigator. A hand was laid on his shoulder, and a friendly voice inquired,
"Did you get your share of the plunder, my son?"
The lad shook his head a trifle impatiently. "I be no beggar," he answered. "I be a ship's boy."
"Ay," said the man, "and you seek not the Golden Fleece?"
His eyes laughed, and his long fingers played with a strange jewel that glowed like Mars in the midnight of his breast. It was of gold enamel, with a splendid ruby in the center, and hanging from it a tiny golden ram. Could he mean that? But the crowd surged between them and left the boy wondering. He had never spoken to a Spaniard before.
As the fluttering pulse grew stronger and the man roused from his stupor, disjointed phrases of sinister meaning fell from his lips. No names were used, and much of his talk was in Spanish, but it suggested a foul undercurrent of bribery, falsehood and conspiracy hidden by the bright magnificence of the young Queen's court. The queer fact seemed to be that the speaker appeared himself to be the victim of some Spanish plot. Now why should that be, and he a Spaniard?
The young captain turned from the window, intowhich through the clearing air the moon was shining, to find the stranger looking at him with sane though troubled eyes.
"TheGolden Fleece?" he asked in English. Drake shook his head.
"You've had a bad hurt, sir," he said, and briefly explained the circumstances.
"Ah," said the man frowning, and was silent.
"If you would wish to send any word to your friends,—" Drake began, and hesitated.
"I have no friends here, save my servant Sancho. TheGolden Fleecewill sail on Saint James's Eve for Coruna, and he was to meet me at Dover and return with me to our own country. In Alcala they know what to expect of a Saavedra."
The last words were spoken with a proud assurance that gave the listener a tingling sense of something high and indomitable. Saavedra's dark eyes were searching his face.
"I fear I trespass on your kindness," he added courteously, "and that I have talked some nonsense before I came to myself."
"Nothing of any account, sir," answered the lad quickly. "Mostly it was Spanish—and I don't know much o' that. You'll miss your ship if she sails so soon, but you're welcome here so long as you like to stay."
"I thank you," said the Spaniard in a relieved tone, adding half to himself, "No friends—but one cannot break faith—even with an enemy."
He dropped asleep almost at once after swallowing the cordial which Drake held to his lips. The moon came up over the flooded meadows that were all silvery lights and black shadow like a fairy realm. The ladhad never spent a night like this, even when he had seen his master die.
When the pearl and rose of a July morning overspread the sky he descended, to splash and spatter and souse his rough brown head in a bucket of fresh-drawn water, and wheedle the old dame into a good humor.
"What ye hate and fear's bound to come to ye, sooner or later," Granny Toothacre grumbled as she stirred her savory broth, "My old man said so and I never beleft it—here be I at my time o' life harborin' a Spanisher."
"Ah, now, mother,"—Drake laid a brown hand coaxingly on her old withered one,—"you'll take good care of him for me, and we'll share the ransom."
"Ransom," the old woman muttered, looking after the straight, sturdy young figure as it strode down to the wharf, "not much hope o' that. Not but what he's a grand gentleman," she admitted, turning the contents of her saucepan into her best porringer. "He don't give me a rough word no more than if I was a lady."
Drake spent all his leisure during the next fortnight with the Spaniard, whose recovery was slow but steady. It was tacitly understood that the less said of the incident which had left him stunned and half-drowned the better. If those who had sought to kill him knew him to be alive, they might try again.
The young seaman had never known a man like this before. In his guest's casual talk of his young days one could see as in a mirror the Spain of a half-century since, with its audacious daring, its extravagant chivalry and its bulldog ferocity.
"They have outgrown us altogether, these young fellows," he said once with his quaint half-melancholysmile. "When the King and Queen rode in armor at the head of their troops in Granada, our cavaliers dreamed of conquering the world—now it has all been conquered."
"Not England," Drake put in quickly.
"Not England—I beg your pardon, my friend. But we have grown heavy with gold in these days—and gold makes cowards."
"It never made a coward o' me," laughed the lad. "Belike it'll never have the chance."
Through the shadows the old ship's-lantern cast in the rude half-timbered room seemed to move the wild figures of that marvellous pageant of conquest which began in 1492. Saavedra spoke little of himself but much of others—Ojeda, Nicuesa, Balboa, Cortes, Alvarado, Pizarro. In his soft slow speech they lived again, while by the stars outside, unknown uncharted realms revealed themselves. This man used words as a master mariner would use compass and astrolabe.
"Those days when we followed Balboa in his quest for the South Sea," he ended, "were worth it all. Gold is nothing if it blinds a man to the heavens. You too, my son, may seek the Golden Fleece in good time. May the high planets fortify you!"
What room was left for a knight-errant in the Spain of to-day, ruling by steel and shot and flame and gold? It must be rather awful, the listener reflected, to see your own country go rotten like that in a generation. Yet there was no bitterness in the old hidalgo's tranquil eyes. "I have been a fool," he said smiling, "but somehow I do not regret it. The wound from a poisoned arrow can be seared with red-hot iron, but for the creeping poison of the soul—the loss of honor—there is no cure."
When the seamen came to get orders from their young captain, Saavedra observed with surprise the lad's clear knowledge of his own trade. Francis Drake's old master had seen King Henry's shipwrights discarding time-honored models to build for speed, speed and more speed. He had seen Fletcher of Rye, in 1539, prove to all the Channel that a ship could sail against the wind. All that he knew he had taught his young apprentice, and now the boy was free to use it for his own work—whatever that should be. Unlike the gilded and perfumed courtiers, these men of the sea showed little respect toward the tall ships of Spain. Saavedra, pleased that they spoke without reserve in his presence, watched the rugged straightforward faces, and wondered.
The time came when they took him and his stocky, silent old servant to board a Vizcayan boat. As they caught his last quick smile and farewell gesture Will Harvest heaved a rueful sigh. "I never thought to be sorrowful at parting with a Don," he said reflectively, "but I be."
"God made men afore the Devil made Dons," growled Tom Moone. "Yon's a man."
Drake had gone down the wharf with John Hawkins of Plymouth, a town that was warmly defiant of Spain's armed monopoly of sea-trade. Privateers were dodging about the trade-routes where Spanish and Portuguese galleons, laden with ingots of gold and silver, dyewoods, pearls, spices, silks and priceless merchandise, moved as menacing sea-castles. Huger and huger galleasses were built, masted and timbered with mighty trunks from the virgin forests of the Old World, four and five feet thick. The military discipline of the Continent made a warship a floating barrack;the decks of a Spanish man-of-war were packed with drilled troops like marching engines of destruction, dealing leaden death from arquebus and musquetoun. The little ships of Cabot, Willoughby and William Hawkins had not exceeded fifty, sixty, at most a hundred tons; Philip's leviathans outweighed them more than ten to one. What could England do against the landing of such an army? An English Admiral would be Jack the Giant-Killer with no magic at his command. Yet in the face of all this, under the very noses of the Spanish patrol, Protestant craftsmen were escaping from the Inquisition in the Netherlands to England, where Elizabeth had contrived to let it be known that they were quite welcome.
To a perfectly innocent and lawful coasting trade Drake and his crew now added this hazardous passenger service. They were braving imprisonment, torture and the stake, for in 1562 no less than twenty-six Englishmen were burned alive in Spain, and ten times as many lay in prison. Before Drake was twenty all Spanish ports were closed to English trade. He sold his ship and joined Hawkins in his more or less contraband trade with the West Indies.
With every year of adventure upon the high seas his hatred of the tyranny of Spain deepened and strengthened. Yet though Spanish ferocity might soak the world in blood, he would not have his men tainted with the evil inheritance of the idolaters. It came to be known that El Draque did not kill prisoners. His crews fought like demons, but they slew no unarmed man, they molested no woman or child. On these terms only would he accept allies. Tons of plunder he took, but never a helpless life. He landed the shivering crews of his prizes on some Spanish island or witha laugh returned to them their empty ships. "A dead man's no mortal use to anybody," he would say cheerily, and go on using his cock-boats to sink or capture galleys. At twenty-seven, beholding for the first time the shining Pacific, he vowed that with God's help he would sail an English ship on that sea. Alone upon the platform built in a great tree with steps cut in its trunk, to which his negro allies the Maroons had guided him, he conceived the sublimely audacious plan which he was one day to unfold to Walsingham and the Queen.
The air was thick with rumors of war with Spain when Drake arrived in London years later, in the company of a new friend, Thomas Doughty,—courtier, soldier, scholar, familiar with every shifting undercurrent of European court life. Never at a loss for a phrase, ready of wit and quick of understanding, Doughty could put into words what the frank-hearted young sea-captain had thought and felt and dreamed. Both knew the peace with Philip to be only deceptive. Walsingham and Leicester were for war; Burleigh for peace; between the two the subtle Queen played fast and loose with her powerful enemy.
Drake avowed to Doughty his belief that to strike effectively at the gigantic power of Spain, England must raid the colonies—not the West Indies alone, but the rich western provinces of Peru and Chili. No one had been south of Patagonia since its discovery, sixty years before. Geographers still held that beyond the Straits of Magellan a huge Antarctic continent existed. From that unknown region of darkness and tempest came the great heaving ground-swell, the tidal wave and the hurricane. Even Spanish pilots never used the perilous southern route. Treasure wentoverland across the Isthmus. Every year an elephantine treasure-ship sailed from Panama westward through the South Sea; and there was a rich trade between the American mines and the Orient and the Spanish peninsula, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. Doughty's imagination was fired by the gorgeous possibilities of the idea, and when he became the secretary of Christopher Hatton, the Queen's handsome Captain of the Guard, he laid the plan before him with all the eloquence of his persuasive tongue. Hatton finally obtained from Elizabeth a promise to contribute a thousand crowns to the cost of an expedition to penetrate the South Seas. This, however, was only on condition that the affair should be kept secret, above all from Burleigh, who was certain to use every effort to stop it. She had already, in a private audience with Drake, been informed of the main features and even the details of the scheme, and had assured him that when the time was ripe he should be chosen to avenge the long series of injuries which Philip had inflicted upon England's honor and her own.
When in mid-November, 1577, Drake ran out of Plymouth with his tiny fleet, he had with him all told one hundred and fifty seamen and fourteen boys, enlisted for a voyage to Alexandria, although it was pretty well known that this was a blind. His flagship, thePelican, afterward re-christened theGolden Hyndefor Hatton's coat-of-arms, was a hundred-ton ship carrying eighteen guns. TheMarygold, a barque of thirty tons and fifteen guns, and theSwan, a provision ship of fifty tons, were commanded by two of the gentlemen volunteers, Mr. John Thomas and Mr. John Chester. Captain John Wynter commanded theElizabeth, a new eighty-ton ship, and afifteen-ton pinnace called theChristopherin honor of Hatton, was commanded by Tom Moore. Thomas Doughty was commander of the land-soldiers, and his brother John was enlisted among the gentlemen adventurers.
All of Drake's experience and sagacity had gone to the fitting out of the ships. There were less than fifty men on board besides the regular crews, and among them were special artisans, two trained surveyors, skilled musicians furnished with excellent instruments, and the adventurous sons of some of the best families in England. As page the Admiral had his own nephew, Jack Drake. There were stores of wild-fire, chain-shot, arquebuses, pistols, bows, and other weapons. The Queen herself had sent packets of perfume breathing of rich gardens, and Drake's table furniture was of silver gilt, engraved with his arms; even some of the cooking utensils were of silver. Nothing was spared which became the dignity of England, her Admiral and her Queen. On calm nights the sea was alive with music. And on board the little flagship Doughty and Drake talked together as those do whose minds answer one another like voices in a roundelay.
Men who have time and again run their heads into the jaws of death are often inclined to fatalism. Drake had never expressed it in words, but he had a feeling that whatever he was meant to do, God would see that he did, so long as he gave himself wholly to the work. One evening when the Southern Cross was lifting above the darkling sea, and the violins were crooning something with a weird burden to it, Doughty mused aloud.
"'T is the strangest thing in life, that whatever we are most averse to, that we are fated to do."
"Eh?" said Drake with a laugh, looking up fromEden's translation of Pigafetts. "Accordin' to that you can't even trust yourself. D'you look to see me set up an image to be worshiped?" Then he added in a lower tone, "That's foolish, Tom. God don't shape us to be puppets."
"That sounds like old Saavedra," was Doughty's idle comment. "He had great store of antiquated sentiments—like those in the chronicles of the paladins. I knew his nephew well—a witty fellow, but visionary. He laughed at the old cavalero, but he was fond of him, and our affections rule us and ruin us. A man should have no loves nor hates if he would get on at court."
Sheer surprise kept the other silent for the moment, and Doughty went on,—
"The old man had been in Mexico with Cortes, and might have risen to Adelantado in some South American province if he had not been too scrupulous to join Pizarro. He was in London, ten or fifteen years before I knew him, and I believe he was the destruction of a well-considered Spanish plot for the assassination of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth—the assassins nearly killed him. He was left for dead and was picked up by some sailors."
"He was in luck." Drake's eyes twinkled.
"They would have been luckier—if they had let the Spanish agents in London know they had him. He paid them well of course, but he gave them credit for the most exalted motives. All his geese were swans."
"Maybe they acted out o' pure decency," Drake said dryly.
"My Admiral, this is not Utopia." Doughty stroked his beard with a light complacent hand. "Seriously, it is not a kindness to expect of men withouttraditions more than they are capable of doing. 'E meglio cade dalle fenestre che del tetto.'" (It is better to fall from the window than from the roof.)
Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard with the blade inlaid with gold and the great ruby in the top of the hilt, which lay on the table between them. The shipmaster came in just then with some question, and the conversation dropped.
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"Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard."—Page 227"Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard."—Page 227
"Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard."—Page 227"Drake was silent, fingering the slender Milanese poniard."—Page 227
It was not often that Francis Drake attempted to analyze the character and behavior of those about him. Mostly he judged men by a shrewd instinct; but that night he lay long awake, watching the witch-lights upon the waves from the dancing lanterns. He was acute enough to see that Doughty had hit slyly at him over Saavedra's shoulders. Doughty had not liked it that Moone should be raised to the rank of captain; he had already shown that he regarded himself as second only to Drake in command, and the champion of the gentlemen as distinct from the mariners. The second officer of every English ship was a practical shipmaster whose authority held in all matters concerning navigation. The soldiers and their officers were passengers. This was unavoidable in view of the new method of English sea-fighting, which depended quite as much on the skill of the seamen as on the armed and trained soldier. English gunners could give the foe a broadside and slip away before their huge adversary could turn. Drake now had two factions to deal with, and he bent his brows and set his jaw as he pondered the situation. If discord arose, the gentlemen would have to come to order. There was no room here for old ideas of caste. Any man too good to haul on a rope might go to—Spain.
Doughty had a way of taking it for granted thatDrake and he, as gentlemen, shared thoughts and feelings not to be comprehended by common men. On land this had not seemed offensive, but on blue water, with the old sea-chanteys in his ears, in the intimate association of a long voyage, Drake found himself resenting it. What was there about the man that made his arguments so plausible when one heard them, so false when his engaging presence was withdrawn? And yet how devoted, how sympathetic, how witty and companionable he could be! Drake found himself excusing his friend as if he were a woman,—laughed, sighed, and went to sleep.
Presently he began to hear of John Doughty's amusing himself by reading palms and playing on the superstitions of the sailors with strange prophecies, in which his brother sometimes joined. Drake summoned the two to a brief interview in which Thomas Doughty learned that his friend on land, frank, boyish and unassuming, was a different person from the Admiral of the Fleet. Yet as this impression faded, the brothers perversely went on encouraging discord between the gentlemen adventurers and the sailors, and foretelling events with sinister aptness.
It grew colder and colder. It should be summer,—but as they crept southward they encountered cold and wind beyond that of the North Sea in January. The nights grew long; the battering of the gales never ceased; the ships lost sight of one another. It was whispered that not only had the uncanny brothers foretold the evil weather, but Thomas Doughty had boasted of having brought it about. "We'll ha' no luck till we get rid of our prophet," said blunt Tom Moone, "and the Lord don't provide no whales for the likes o' he."
Drake warned his comrade with an ominous quiet. "Doughty," he said, "if you value your neck you keep your reading and writing to what a common man can understand—you and your brother. A man can't always prophesy for himself, let alone other folk."
"You heard what he said," commented Wynter grimly when the Admiral was in his cabin behind closed doors. "Better not raise the devil unless you know for sure what he'll do. There's been one gallows planted on this coast."
"Sneck up!" laughed Doughty, "he would not dare hang a gentleman!" but he felt a creeping chill at the back of his neck.
On the desolate island where the stump of Magellan's gallows stood black against a crimson dawn, they landed and the tragedy of estrangement and suspicion ended. Thomas Doughty was tried for mutiny and treason before a jury of his peers. Every man there held him a traitor, yet he was acquitted for lack of evidence. Thus encouraged, Doughty boldly declared that they should all smart for this when Burleigh heard of it. What he had done to hinder the voyage, he averred, was by Burleigh's orders, for before they sailed he had gone to that wily statesman and told him the entire scheme.
In a flash of merciless revelation Drake saw the truth. He left Doughty to await the verdict, called the companies down to the shore, and there told them the story of the expedition from first to last, not overlooking the secret orders of the Queen.
"This man was my friend," he said with a break in his voice such as they had not heard save at the suffering of a child. "I would not take his life,—but if he be worthy of death, I pray you hold up your hands."
There was a breathless instant when none stirred; then every hand was raised.
On the next day but one they all sat down to a last feast on that bleak and lonely shore; the two comrades drank to each other for the last time, shared the sacrament, and embracing, said their farewells. Doughty proved that if he could not live a true man he could die like a gentleman; the headsman did his work, and Drake pronounced the solemn sentence, "Lo! this is the death of traitors!"
In that black hour the boyish laughter went forever from the eyes of the Admiral, and the careless mirth from his voice. When after a while young Jack Drake, unable to bear the silence that fell between them, began some phrase of blundering boyish affection, the sentence trailed off into a stammer.
"He's dead and at peace, Jack," the master said, the words dropping wearily, like spent bullets. "He couldn't help being as he was,—I reckon. If I'd known he was like that I could ha' stopped him, but I never knew—till too late."
Discord among the crews continued, until Drake, rousing from his fitful melancholy, called them all together on a Sunday, and mounted to the place of the chaplain.
"I am going to preach to-day," he said shortly. Then he unfolded a paper and began to read it aloud.
"My masters, I am a very bad orator, for my bringing up hath not been in learning; but what I shall speak here let every man take good notice of and let him write it down. For I will speak nothing but what I will answer it in England, yea, and before Her Majesty." He reminded them of the great adventure before them and went on.
"Now by the life of God this mutiny and dissension must cease. Here is such controversy between the gentlemen and the sailors that it doth make me mad to hear it. I must have the gentleman to haul with the mariner and the mariner with the gentleman. I would know him that would refuse to set his hand to a rope—but I know there is not any such here.
"Any who desire to go home may go in theMarygold, but let them take care that they do go home, for if I find them in my way I will sink them."
Then beginning with Wynter he reduced every officer to the ranks forthwith, reprimanded known offenders, and wound up with this appeal:
"We have set by the ears three mighty sovereigns, and if this voyage have not success we shall be a scorning unto our enemies and a blot on our country forever. What triumph would it not be for Spain and Portugal! The like of this would never more be tried!" Then he gave every man his former rank and dismissed them. Moone, meeting Will Harvest that night by the light of a bonfire, was the only man who dared venture a comment. "We was spoilin' for a lickin'," he said, "and we got it. I do hope and trust we'll keep out o' mischief till Frankie gets us home to Plymouth, Hol'." Will grinned back cheerfully, and there was a subdued laugh from the group about the fire. The fleet was itself again.
Adventure after adventure succeeded, wilder than minstrel ever sang. TheMarygoldwent down with all hands; Wynter in theElizabeth, believing the Admiral lost, turned homeward; theChristopherand theSwanhad already been broken up. All alone the littleGolden Hynde, blown southward, sailed around Cape Horn and proved the Antarctic continent a myth.Then Drake steered northward after more than two month's tossing on the uncharted seas, to revictual his ship in Spanish ports, fill his hold with the rich cargoes of one prize ship after another, and capture at last the great annual treasure-shipNuestra Señora de la Concepçion, nicknamed theSpitfirebecause she was better armed than most of the ships plying on that coast. As they ballasted theGolden Hyndewith silver from her huge hulk the jesting seamen dubbed her theSpit-silver. The little flagship was literally brimful of silver bars, ingots of gold, pieces of eight, and jewels whose value has never been accurately known. The Spanish Adelantados, accustomed to trust in their remoteness for defense, frantically looked for Drake everywhere except where he was. Warships hung about the Patagonian coast to catch him on his way home—surely he could not stay at sea forever!
But Drake had other plans. Navigators were still searching for the northern passage, the Straits of Anian, and he coasted northward until his men were half paralyzed with cold and the creeping chill of the fog. From the latitude of Vancouver he turned south again, and put into a natural harbor not far from the present San Francisco, which he named New Albion because of the white cliffs like the chalk downs of England. Here he landed and made camp to refit and repair his flagship. He had captured on one prize, two China pilots in whose possession were all the secret charts of the Pacific trade.
Indians ventured down from the mountains to the little fort and dockyard, wondering and admiring. Parson Fletcher presently came to the Admiral with the extraordinary news that they were worshiping the English as gods. Horror and laughter contendedamong the Puritans when they found themselves set up as idols of the heathen, and the chaplain endeavored by signs to teach the simple savages that the God whom all men should worship was invisible in the heavens.
"'T only shows," remarked Moone, with a nail in one corner of his mouth, after vehemently dissuading a persistent adorer, "that a man never knows what he'll come to. Granny Toothacre used to say that if there's a thing you fight against all your life it'll come to you sooner or later."
"So she did," said Drake with a grim smile as he passed. "Takes a woman to tell a fortune, after all."
"D'you ever hear what become of the old Don we picked up that time?" Moone asked in a lowered voice.
"Not since he sent Frankie the dagger with the gold work and the jewel. Why?"
"'Cause the pilot o' theSpit-silverhe knowed un. He say the plague broke out in the Low Countries, and the old Don took and tended that Gallego servant o' his and then he died—not o' the pestilence—just wore out like. I reckon maybe he told Mus' Drake. I didn't."
Silence fell. Then Will said thoughtfully, "He won't be Mus' Drake much longer—by rights—but you never know what a woman'll do. She keep her presents and her favors for them that ha'n't earned 'em—as a rule."
Moone presently hummed half aloud,